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George W. Bush proclaimed this past week, "Protection From Pornography Week". I would be fine with the proclamation if it were to only include child pornography, but unfortunately, the President includes "obscenity on the Internet" as something which needs more intense scrutiny.

But what is obscene? I understand the rules about "community standards", but would a message board such as the LPSG be considered obscene to George Bush and his band of prosecutors?

I think the proclamation should have been named something like "Protection From Child Pornography Week". I, for one, do not want the government "protecting" me from pornography. I think most adults would agree with me.

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da_blissmachine: should we lodge a protest against this? sign a petition... we have a potential 12,000+ signatures.. we would of course specify that we do object to child pornography and exposing children to pornography and display and access of pornography in public places

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I agree it should be "Protection From Child Pornography Week". I'd like to ask, why do I need protection from porn? It's my friend. It doesn't hurt me or hunt me down! Just for that, I'm spending all week at thehun.

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tracksuitboy: This (protection from pornohgraphy) is the just the sort of shit you expect from a) most politicians and b) right wing twats like Bush. It is pernicious that his proclamation links porn with child sex with sex offender (in the same way that words like "homosexual" and "paedophile" are linked) to create an inseparable bond in people's minds.

I think the timing of this is interesting too. Bush has proved himself to be one of the worst President's in history - 2 1/2 million jobs lost since he became President, a war against a country which DIDN'T have weapons of mass destruction and an economy which is struggling - so he goes for the easy targets and porn is one thing which will have people tut-tutting to themselves and will garner the Right.

Is it too much to hope that politicians may one day tackle real problems and not hide behind the same old smoke screens (sorry, I'm being delusional there!).

The majority of porn sites on the Net are behind AVS services, so children cannot get into them and presumably no one under 18 (or 21?) can buy porn in shops anyway (it's 18 in the UK).

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Proclamations are like "National Garlic Pickle Week"....something to bring attention to something but...the laws in place about pornography are already there....AND they tend to be on a state level, not the federal one.

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Yes, it is child-based, but as I'm sure you know, there are forces out there that want to restrict access to, and in some cases eliminate, websites that contain sexual content in general. This would include not only pornography, but also information about gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender issues, and information about sexually transmitted diseases.

It's been talked about before - the LPSG is labeled "obscene" by some people. This would be a much less interesting message board if you had to purchase an adult verification before you could participate, or even read the messages here. A few months ago, when I thought it would be prudent to put up a warning page that basically said "Adults Only", I heard from LOTS of teenagers, both boys and girls, who said that they loved coming here and that this was where they learned the most about sexuality.

I just think that it's very important to be aware of these things and to be sensitive to any possibility that our freedoms could be restricted.

If there's going to be a "Protection From Pornography Week", then logically, there should also be a "Protection From Violent Movies Week", but I doubt that will happen.

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The problem with the "community standards" law is that it was written before everyone had a computer, and before ANYONE even had a VCR at home. It was intended to be used toward the old-style porn theaters that were in almost every city in this country.

I can see how community standards might apply when you've got a theater sitting on a major intersection in town, but when you're talking about some guy in rural Arkansas ordering a video from a website or watching streaming video on the internet in the privacy of his own trailer, I don't see why community standards should even matter.

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Perhaps community standards will continue to matter because of differing community laws.

One quirky thing about Virginia, among other states, is the fact that cities and counties are separate entities, such that there may be as many differing obscenity laws as there are governments in a given area.

I'm not sure that there is much difference between a published book, magazine, videotape (or dvd) or an internet site when it comes to a community determining standards of obscenity. All are mass produced. All will be dealt with individually on the community level.